Air-soft Gun
From Mod Mania
Air-soft Gun Mod
Do you know what Air-soft gun is? Air-soft gun is a non-lethal and replica of an actual firearm. Air-soft gun was first created in Japan for people who are passionate about guns and the bullet are plastic pellets, so it is safe to use. They mostly used for target practicing, shooting competition and to experience military simulation.
What source of energy that was used to power these guns? There 3 types of energy that was used to power these guns, which is spring, gas and electric. But the most common energy that was used is the electric air-soft gun.
Spring powered Air-soft gun.
Spring powered air-soft guns are the entry-level air-soft guns. These air-soft guns do not need batteries or CO2. They work off of a spring technology where you pull the lever back and it loads the next plastic pellet bullet and you pull the trigger and it shoots. These air-soft guns are the most affordable of all. Spring air-soft gun are available for pistol type, shotgun type and rifle type, but there is a difference between these the pistol and shotgun to the rifle types. In spring-powered pistol and shotgun it can only shoot 1 bullet, then you have to pull the lever again to shoot the next bullet. But in spring powered rifle you only need to pull the lever back once only to shoot 1 magazine, for the next magazine you have to pull the lever back again.
Gas powered Air-soft gun.
Gas power tends to be used in air-soft pistols where size constraints make electric-powered mechanisms impractical. Other instances where gas is favored are where adjustable velocities are required or where a blowback feature is desired. A blowback feature is a mechanism, which cycles a slide, or bolt to better simulate a real firearm's operation. Because of the mechanical complexities involved with distributing and regulating gas, these guns have largely given way to electric guns for less specialized applications, however, they still remain favorable amongst some air-soft gunners. They are not just limited to pistols; submachine gun air-soft replicas and sniper rifle air-soft replicas commonly use gas mechanisms. Whilst the submachine gun replicas typically feature a blowback mechanism similar to the pistol replicas, sniper rifle replicas usually omit the blowback mechanism in favor of reduced recoil and increased muzzle velocity. The most popular gases used in gas air-soft guns are Red Gas and Green Gas.
- Red Gas.
Red gas contains HCFC-22 (Chlorodifluoromethane), CO2 and Nitrogen/high pressure air. It is unlawful to use HCFC-22 as a propellant in the US. HCFC-22 is Class II ozone depleting substance and its use as a aerosol propellant has been banned since January 1994 under section 610(d) of Clean Air Act. Therefore it was abandon unless the guns have been modified and required to use red gas.
- Green gas.
Green gas is the most commonly because it causes lesser ozone depletion than red gas. Green gas contains a mixture of propane and plysiloxane lubricant and HFC-134a
Electric powered Air-soft gun.
Electric-powered air-soft guns typically use a rechargeable battery to drive an electric motor, which runs the spring assembly in order to launch pellets. This gun can shot variable setting which is, Automatic shot, 3 round burst shot, and semi-automatic shot operation is possible which gives these guns the popular name "automatic electric guns" or AEGs
These guns often get muzzle velocities between 150 and 650 ft/s and rates of fire of between 100 and 1500 rounds per minute. They are the most commonly used and widely available type of air-soft gun.
Bullets (Air-soft pellets).
Air-soft pellets are round-shaped plastic that is similar to marble but a lot smaller. They usually range in size from 5.93 to 5.98 mm in diameter, though select models use 8 mm or 3 mm pellets. There are different types of pellets that give suit to different user’s needs. Basically, there are three different types of pellets. The biodegradable pellets are the most common used for outdoors. These conventional pellets are harmful to the environment. It’s have petroleum-based center coated non-biodegradable plastics, that will remain in the environment for more than hundred years if it’s not collected. Resin is the material to make the biodegradable pellets.
The second type of pellets is Tracer BB aka Glow-in-the-dark BB. It’s usually hidden and pretends as a suppressor, which is silencer. Paintballs is the paint-filled pellets aka markerballs. The paintball pellets are not suitable to use in the airsoft model because it’s contains hop-up projectile stabilizing system.
While choosing the pellets, the weight should be considered because its will affect the pellet performance in different aspects. Talking about the speed, the lighter pellets will have higher velocities but it’s can be influence by the wind and turn it’s into low velocities. However for the heavier pellets, it’s actually is slower but it’s can hit harder. Besides that, the lighter pellets will affect the curvature of the projectile (trajectory). Well, it’s still depends on the player’s gaming style, the structure of the gun, the game location such as in/outdoor and also the regulations.
During matches, the players are highly recommended to wear the eye protection for preventing the pellets hits on your eyes. Airsoft pellets typically will leave small wheals on human skin.
Magazine.
It's a metal receptacle for a number of cartridges, inserted into certain types of automatic weapons and when empty removed and replaced by a full receptacle in order to continue firing. It’s actually looks quite realistic because it’s made of stamped metal or high impact plastic. There are few types of magazines.
Tokyo Marui and some other gun manufacturer manufacture the standard magazine. They were given a name called “Standard-Cap” because the magazines can be used for many weapons. Most of them comprehend around 68BBs and are usually loaded by inserting the pellets and compress a spring field inside and the pellets will be feed into the gun.
Safety procedures.
Air-soft gun is considered as dangerous toys if it is pointed at a person within 2 meter without body amour or goggles. Air-soft gun only can be played in certain place such as firing range or in air-soft gun community area, other than that it is consider illegal.
Some of the heavier projectiles are made out of copper or other metal that actually can infiltrate the human skin and it’s was eliminated at all airsoft events. Besides that, airsoft gun is require to have an orange tip on the gun for transportation only but it’s still depends on the local law. Basically, the weight of the BB is 0.12 – 0.30 grams, but it can be up to 0.43 grams or more for some specific BBs. There are a lot high-powered airsoft guns can penetrate the skin at the short distance about 2 meters. This is considered, as a high power devices and it will derecognize or banned.
Airsoft gun modification.
Airsoft gun is famous worldwide especially in Japan (originated place), USA, and United Kingdom since it’s a extremely fun game and its appeal to a large age range from teens to adults with males and females. Many online communities were formed in each local country and that’s the reason why different area has different rules. The purpose of online community is to allow the airsoft gun fans to share information, opinions, and also trading. Through online, you actually can show your modified airsoft gun so other people able to give comment or admire you and become your fans. There’s heaps of tutorial video posted up to Youtube as well.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFAys0Qq66wThe video above is about modification of Airsoft AK-47, which added a muzzle-flash effect. What he does was actually just mounting the LED light and a resistor to the front sight. The outcome is once you fire; the interval of LED light will flash dramatically.
The reason for modification of the airsoft gun is because to increase the pellet velocity or maybe the rate of fire. To improve the pellet velocity for the electric airsoft gun, what you need to do actually is pretty simple which is just upgrading the mainspring. However, the pressure produced will increase while it’s operating. So what I suggest is to upgrade the other parts with the mainspring so that the reliability will remain the same.
The rate of fire can be increase to more than 20 rounds per second with only few upgrades. What you need actually is a battery with a higher voltage, high-speed ratio gears and high-speed motor. However you have to be careful while choosing the gear. Besides that, using different types of gases or changing the valve actually will increase the pellet velocity.
Basically the airsoft guns come with mounts to allow you to add extra stuff. The most common thing you can do is adding the LED flashlights, scopes, and lasers etc. The look and the structure of the airsoft guns are actually quite similar to the real gun. It’s actually can be transformed to the real gun by changing the internal parts. In the other hand, the scopes and flashlights will have some effect on the performance of the airsoft gun, but it’s still depends on the user’s capability. Most of the time, the purposes of the modifications mostly are because of the aesthetic rather than the performance.
Air-soft gun in Australia.
Electric air-soft gun is still consider to be illegal firearms because of the mechanism function and the military shape. But some of the spring and gas powered air-soft gun is legal in some state but it had to have a permission and license to keep it. Different states in Australian have their own different view about the air-soft gun. For example In South Australia Air-soft gun in any forms or powered with any energy are consider being illegal. According to the Government Gazette pursuant to regulation 5 of the Firearms Act 1997:
Pursuant to Regulation 5 of the Firearms Act l977, I, Malcolm Arthur Hyde, Registrar of Firearms, hereby declare that the toy firearms known as 'air soft', 'soft air', 'light sports pistols' or other similar toys that have a muzzle velocity of 180 feet per second or greater, one metre from the muzzle, are firearms for the purposes of Section 5 (1) of the Firearms Act 1977.
This means that these toys are now firearms and are subject to all the conditions of the Firearms Act 1977, including licensing and registration.
Air-soft gun in Japan.
In Japan air-soft gun is consider as a legal toys but the muzzle energy of the gun must be bellow 0.98 joule. Tokyo Marui is the world largest company who develop air-soft guns. Up until now they keep on releasing new types of air-soft gun from the world war firearms to nowadays fire arms. Japan government also restricted the construction of the gun, because they afraid that people will modify it to become a real firearms. But it turns out that Japanese government successfully taken care of that problem. It is said that to modify the air-soft gun to a real firearms cost more than buying a real firearms.
Air-soft gun in Indonesia.
Air-soft gun is still consider as a toy to experience the thrill of military simulation and also as a shooting sport which is more safe than using real fire arms. The Founders of Indonesia shooting club is called PERBAKIN (Indonesia Shooting Club). Perbakin is club which was establish by air-soft gunner’s and police in order to control the use of air-soft gun outside of the arena, such as robberies that involved of the use of air-soft gun.
In my opinion Air-soft guns is consider to be dangerous if it is used outside of the shooting arena or competition, but other than that air-soft gun is fantastic sport. I myself bought a one electric air-soft gun back in my home country (Medan, North Sumatra, Indonesia). Me and my friend went to the shooting range a lot to practices and also to form a team to join competition or to just play with other teams. It was a fun challenge and experience to be able to play against other people with our own strategy. These toys are not limited only to teenagers but also some of the adults and also some police are playing it as well. We were teach how to change or modify some of the feature to get a better accuracy such as the battery power, the spring and the magazine which will allow us to have a smoother shooting.
Reference:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airsoft_pellets
http://www.jdairsoftguns.com/use_airsoft_guns_for_unlimited_fun/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airsoft_guns
